Intaction News

Young man’s anguish over circumcision ends in suicide.

The Death of Kevin Cagle

Another young man with his whole life ahead of him decided to tragically end his life – anguished over genital cutting.

Kevin Cagle was unable to comprehend why parents and doctors decided to needlessly cut and mutilate his genitals as an infant. Anger and grief turned into despair and depression. Kevin said to a friend, ” I hate my body. I don’t feel whole. Thanks to my parents for that.”

Kevin was a Leachville Arkansas native but moved to San Francisco California.

Kevin went on to say ” I’m thoroughly disgusted we live in a world where cosmetic procedures can be performed on infants.” Kevin went on to thank friends for being kind, wishing them the best in life. Kevin asked friends to be happy for him now, presumably because ending his life is what he wanted so as to be finally in peace.

Kevin asked a good friend to post his final remarks on Facebook. Afterwards, on March 31 2015, Kevin Cagle made the ultimate decision to end his life. He was just 20 years old.

The suicide of Jonathon Conte, 34, also from San Francisco, in May 2016 followed the death of Cagle.

Some mental health experts feel that circumcised males are physically, emotionally, mentally and socially harmed by the act, and this can lead to depression and horrible consequences. According to StopMaleSuicide.com (circumcision and suicide), when men face problems they can neither fix, nor cope with, their risk of suicide rises.

We are saddened over the despair of those who turn to suicide to find relief from the anguish of genital cutting. Intaction offers a means to constructively heal the wounds and personal pain caused by genital cutting by helping those affected with a way to contribute towards ending this practice.

An American father adopts an Asian daughter. He loves her just the way she is except for her eyes. They make her look sleepy. So he, a plastic surgeon himself, arranges for a blepharoplasty, minimal surgery that will make her eyes rounder. It’s just a small cosmetic procedure, but the results are stunning, and the father is happy. Now his daughter can be a part of her Caucasian family with eyes that approximate theirs.

Does the prospect of the well-meaning father shaping his daughter’s eyes (a true story) make you uncomfortable? If it does, what happens when I draw a comparison between “Asian eye surgery” and male circumcision? Do you protest, as some of my students did, that they’re not the same thing? If so, why is circumcision different. Is it, unlike eye rounding, medically necessary or beneficial? Is it different because a scalpel is applied to the penis and not the eyes? Is it unique because, unlike eye rounding, circumcision has roots in the Hebrew Bible as a covenant between Abraham and his god?

Circumcision is the most common surgery in America, but it raises important questions about the rights of children, parental control, and the duty of doctors to do no harm. For some, these questions are not abstract. Consider the Intactivist Movement, whose members believe, at the broadest level, that humans should be allowed to make their own decisions about their bodies. They envision a world in which no child, girl or boy, is mutilated in the name of “culture, religion, profit, or parental preference.” At Union Square in Manhattan this month, the side of an Intactivist truck displayed photographs of young men holding photographs of themselves as children, along with the words “Circumcision: I Did Not Consent.” The movement has momentum. Later this year, a feature-length documentary directed by Brendon Marotta called “American Circumcision” is due for release. Its purpose: “to start the national conversation our culture needs to have about circumcision.”

What’s the big deal, you might think. Shouldn’t Muslim and Jewish communities —and millions of American families — be allowed to shape their children as they please? Maybe you think circumcision is a vital cultural practice. Like clitoridectomy, it shows you are part of a group.

The truth is, there is risk in circumcision and little benefit. No medical society in the world recommends the procedure as necessary. None of the data in its favor are conclusive, but the risks are very real. For centuries now, advocates have made claims for circumcision. For medieval Jewish philosopher Maimonides, circumcision damages the penis just enough to “counteract excessive lust.” In 1860, The Lancet, a medical journal, promoted it as a preventative to masturbation. Today, some say urinary tract infections are fewer in circumcised boys (who rarely have such infections), as is penile cancer (a rare condition). Brian Morris, archenemy of the prepuce, even claims a foreskin will predispose you to stroke and heart attack.

Circumcision is a social surgery that many American parents agree to. In the rest of the world, circumcised men are the minority. Most European parents don’t see the point of needlessly mutilating their boys’ erogenous tissue. Babies have died or contracted herpes or other infections. Not surprisingly, even American parents are increasingly deciding not to circumcise.

A defenseless infant cannot consent to a permanent alteration of his penis. We wouldn’t tattoo a baby, so why would we cut of a part of his body? Parents routinely expose their boys to the actual harm of surgery for cosmetic or cultural reasons — an unnecessary surgery that is covered in New York, at $500 to $1,000 dollars a slice, by Medicaid.

Physicians have a duty not to harm children. Parents have a duty to regard them, as law professor John A. Robertson’s put it, not as “owners of their children’s personhood,” but as “trustees of their children’s separate welfare.”

by Eric Trump, Valley Views Published 3:22 p.m. ET July 24, 2017

Eric Trump teaches bioethics at Vassar College and is writing a book on organ transplantation. Contact him at ertrump@vassar.edu

Hospitals are quiet at 6 a.m. Nurses are arriving for shift change, carrying giant insulated mugs full of caffeine, trying to look awake. The smell of coffee and scrambled eggs comes from the cafeteria; the smell of disinfectant from everywhere else. I’m in a hospital. It’s a big day. My son is being circumcised.He’s 17.My alarm was set for five but I woke up at 4:57. I think a mother learns early on to wake up before her children — especially one about to have surgery. We live five minutes from the hospital in our small town, getting “ready” for me involves putting on pants — and that’s about it. I wanted time to make toast, so I couldpop the meds that have to be taken “at mealtime,” so I set the alarm I didn’t even use for 5 a.m. to eat toast I don’t even want.Who would even want toast before their child is taken from their sight into a room they’ve never seen? Even if they are 17. Even 17-year-olds are still babies.Circumcision. That’s how I came to be in this hospital, sitting next to my 21-year-old daughter, across from my ex-husband and his new wife, drinking coffee, typing this article as some bizarre writer’s coping mechanism.

You’re probably wondering why a 17-year-old would be circumcised.

It starts in the year 1998 when my first son (who is now 19 and living in his own apartment being an adult) was born. In the year 1998, circumcision was the thing you did. At least in America, it was a thing you did. At least with good insurance, in a big city, with a fancy pediatrician who had the latest studies that somehow proved that circumcision reduced your risk of cancer and STDs and the risk of people thinking your penis looked weird, you circumcised your babies.I was 23 then. I was a smart 23-year-old with a circumcised husband and a circumcised father who told me I’d better not “let my sons go through life wearing a turtleneck.” Which is I guess how he describes penises with foreskin. It wasn’t that I wanted to circumcise my kids. I cried from outside the room they wouldn’t let me in. It’s just that’s what we did then. This was when people were still saying, “Don’t you want him to look like his dad?”I don’t really care. My youngest son isn’t circumcised, and I don’t care if he “looks like his dad.” I do care that he has a choice about what to do with his own body. I do care about inflicting unnecessary pain on him.I also recognize thatother people feel differently. I recognize that we are all doing our best.In the year 2000, I was doing my best. I had my son circumcised.Therisks ofcircumcision were explained to me as “low.”Including:

Pain

Risk of bleeding and infection at the site of the circumcision

Irritation of the glands

Increased risk of meatitis (inflammation of the opening of the penis)

Risk of injury to the penis

These possibilities were presented as “unusual.”Risk not mentioned above by WebMD, or by my physician?Adhesions.Adhesions are, in essence, scar tissue. When a body is injured, as in the case of skin being removed,it tries to heal itself. This is the literal job of the body; you can’t really blame the body for doing its job.Owen’s body did its job. It healed the circumcision the doctor gave him when he was just a few days old. It did so very quickly. I noticed the beginning of the scar tissue forming not long after. On a newborn penis, scar tissue happens fast.The pediatrician wasn’t worried. When you change his diaper, just “separate the skin by pulling,” he said. Then apply ointment to your hysterical infant. He didn’t say that last part, but that’s what happened. Eventually, despite my pulling, it healed itself, as wounds do, and our pediatrician told us not to worry. “When he starts getting regular erections and having sex, it’ll fix itself.”

It did not fix itself

That’s why I’m here, in this hospital. That’s why I’m drinking coffee next to my 21-year-old daughter, across from my ex-husband and his new wife, typing this article and worrying about my baby boy that isn’t a baby anymore.We’ve checked in over the years, me asking how it’s doing, is it correcting itself as the doctor said it would, him saying, “No, it’s not.” It was a few months ago that I asked him if it was causing him pain. “Yes, it is.” Did he want it “fixed.” Yes, he did. There really isn’t a way you can leave something like this “unfixed,” not with pain.Owen is the youngest of what I call my “big kids.” The baby. There are ten long years between him and Ella, which means for ten years he got to be my baby boy. Despite being 17 — driving a car, dating a girl, getting ready to go to college — he is still my baby. His dad used to say I was too soft with him, I let him manipulate me with his tears. He used to say it was obvious that Owen was my favorite.I don’t pick favorites among my kids, but he sure has my heart, this kid. He’s the kid that asks me everything — once upon a time, about the sun and when it will burn out, now, about sex, about how to pay taxes, how you get a mortgage, about how you know who you should marry. He’s the one who sits with me on my bed late at night, after the little kids have gone to bed, and laughs and talks about people and politics.

And today he is being circumcised. Again.

Being re-circumcised is not the same thing as the quick in-office procedure that happens to a newborn. It’s a surgery now. It requires the don’t-eat-after-midnight kind of general anesthesia, IVs, antibiotics, bedrest. Two weeks. No straining. You don’t want to disrupt the stitches, or you might end up with another adhesion. Another surgery.It’s not the same for a mom either. Instead of sitting outside a doctor’s office examination room with my postpartum tears, I’m sitting in a hospital, crying after seeing my son stuck four times — three in the right arm, one in the left — to place an IV in his stubborn veins. Instead of taking my newborn baby into my arms to nurse him, I’ll be driving him home, stopping at the pharmacy on the way to pick up his pain meds. I’ll be delivering food to his bed. I’ll be explaining to him how to take care of his newly re-cut penis.He’ll be applying ointment every day for two weeks. He’ll be lying flat, with all the parts and pieces that are most important to a teenage boy surrounded by gauze, covered in antibiotic cream. He’ll be in pain, for several weeks, which might as well be forever when you’re 17 and you’ve never had anything more than a broken pinky finger.And I will regret that I ever decided to circumcise him in the first place. I will wish I could undo that decision and give him back today, and the summer he’ll spend in bed.I guess the risk of bleeding, pain, irritation, inflammation, and injury wasn’t enough to make me question the decision to circumcise my boys. But the risk of having to sit in a hospital while my teenage son is alone in an OR, undergoing a surgery he never would have needed had I left his penis alone, would have been.

*This story has been told with his permission and desire to make folks aware of something rarely discussed.

Clayton County, GA. The efforts of veteran attorney Jonathan Johnson are, at the moment, heavily focused on a medical malpractice case that will have long lasting consequences for a three-year-old boy who will be growing up with a mutilated penis after a circumcision went very wrong.

His mother has already incurred thousands of dollars in medical bills and there will be many, many medical appointments for her son in the future.

On October 21, 2013, baby DeJuan Williams’ mother brought him to a medical clinic in Clayton County, Georgia where he was scheduled to be circumcised by a nurse midwife.

“The child went in for a circumcision with a nurse midwife in Clinton County when he was three weeks old,” says attorney Jonathan Johnson from the Jonathan Johnson Attorneys at Law in Atlanta, Georgia. “The nurse midwife accidentally severed a portion of his penis. It is the end of the penis called the glans.”

Glans is Latin for the word acorn and refers to the shape of the hyper sensitive tip of the male penis.

According to the statement of claim, the midwife nurse at the Life Cycle OB/GYN clinic laid baby Williams on his back on a table, draped and prepped his genital area. She then used a medical device called a Mogen Clamp to do the procedure.

In the process, the complaint says, the midwife “amputated the glans of DeJuan Williams’ penis by placing and using the Mogen Clamp in an attempt to perform a circumcision on the infant.”

A doctor at the clinic and another nurse midwife were called in and observed the injury. According to court documents they permitted Stacie Willis and her baby to leave the clinic without sending the baby for an immediate consultation with a pediatric urologist along with the severed portion of the penis.

When the lacerated area continued to bleed later that day Stacie Willis took her baby to a hospital emergency room.

“The mother was not told what occurred,” says Johnson. “When she took him to the emergency room they could not visualize the injury. It was actually sometime later when she found out how serious the injury was,” says Johnson.

“The weird thing about the case is that the doctors that cut off the tissue put it a saline solution and put it in the freezer. They never advised the mother or anyone else that they had this tissue available. It possibly could have been re-attached to the child if it had been done properly,” says Johnson.

“The mother never knew they had it,” says Johnson. “We later found out they had it in their refrigerator for several months.”

The case is now in the important examination for discovery phase and will be followed by the certification of expert witnesses.

The named defendants include the nurse midwife, several doctors and the medical clinic. The suit also names Teleflex, the manufacturers and sellers of the Mogen Clamp. According to the statement of claim Teleflex had “a duty to recall the Mogen Clamp because they knew, or reasonably should have known, that it was a defective and unreasonably dangerous medical device not suitable for the intended purpose and use, with the propensity to cause severe and permanent mutilating injury to infants, including amputation of their penis glans.”

It is unlikely that DeJuan Williams will have a normal function of penis now or at any time in the future.

The suit claims Teleflex was reckless and failed to warn that its Mogen Clamp could cause serious debilitating injury. The suit demands in punitive damages $100 million from Teleflex.

“It really cannot be corrected,” says Johnson. “There is no way to correct it at this this point.”

The movement against circumcision is gaining more visibility in the U.S. with some young men particularly questioning the practice as a method of overbearing societal control and unnecessary trauma. And overseas, in Norway, the push to officially ban circumcision has just resulted in a controversy involving allegations of anti-semitism.

Brochure from an anti-circumcision group.

“IDIDNOTCONSENT.ORG” is the name of a group that has been positioning its rather expensive looking truck at prominent locations in Manhattan. The group calls the truck a “mobile education unit.” Staffers hand out brochures and answer questions from a steady parade of men. Some who stop to ask questions are sheepish. Others want to know what they’ve been missing. A few furrow their brow and seem close to throwing up.

The “I Did Not Consent” folks are rather blunt about their message. Their literature contains photos of stern looking guys holding pictures of themselves as babies with statements such as:

Amputation of the foreskin is painful & traumatic for babies. I was tied down in an infant restraint. I was given little anesthesia while a doctor crushed my infant foreskin with a cruel medical device. After ten agonizing minutes, he cut me…I cried out. I DID NOT CONSENT

Another says “foreskin contains 20,000 specialized nerve endings. Circumcision removes them.” And perhaps the most novel argument against the practice; “circumcision was introduced in America as a way to ‘cure’ masturbation in boys.” Certainly many Jewish people would not agree as the practice first appeared in the bible.

Widespread circumcision in the U.S. is a product of medical research that showed it was a way to prevent infection and disease. Many Americans don’t necessarily think of it as a Jewish custom.

For the record, the American Academy of Pediatrics says the medical benefits of routine infant circumcision outweigh the risks. This guidance stands in contrast to guidelines in other English-speaking countries such as Australia, Britain and Canada, which say circumcision is not medically necessary.

In Europe, there is a stronger cultural association between Judaism and circumcision.

A controversial Norwegian newspaper cartoon comparing circumcision to pedophilia.A cartoon in one of Norway’s largest newspapers recently compared circumcision to pedophilia amid a debate in that country over whether to ban the practice.

The cartoon, published Tuesday in Dagbladet, depicts a disheveled man talking to Jewish and Muslim protesters holding signs reading, “Yes to circumcision” and “Freedom of religion.”The man responds, “I understand exactly how it is with you! I also get messages from invisible men in the sky to play around with small kids’ penises!”

Some Norwegians were offended by what they saw as a clear anti-Semitic message. The cartoon came after the Libertarian Progress Party voted to prohibit circumcision. The party, which also strongly opposes immigration, is the third-largest in Norway and is currently in a coalition with the Norwegian Prime Minister’s Conservative party.

Among younger men in the U.S. the entire topic is not as taboo as it once was.A recent Heat Street documentarytold the story of the growing number of men who are trying to restore their foreskin. Many of them want to feel whole again.

There are no official numbers, but online forums and sales figures from device makers suggest there are tens of thousands of men currently “restoring.” The largest online community, RestoringForeskin.org, has more than 16,000 members. And Ron Low, maker of a restoration device called the TLC Tugger, says his business has grown steadily over the past decade, with around 5,000 new customers each year.

Restorers believe the foreskin is not just a useless flap—they argue it protects the head of the penis and makes for better sex. They use a range of devices—typically they involve gradually stretching with weights and straps—and their hands to gently tug on the remaining foreskin. This sustained tension over time creates extra tissue. And although it doesn’t have the specialized nerves and physiological functions of an actual foreskin, restorers say it makes a big difference in the bedroom.

Forced & botched infant circumcision at NYC’s Bellevue Hospital

A botched circumcision at Bellevue Hospital filled a Manhattan infant’s first months with pain, a mom claims in court papers.

An intern circumcised Karina Collado’s baby boy without asking a day after his February 2015 birth, she said in a Manhattan Supreme Court filing.

The boy’s “deformed” penis has two holes on either side of his urethra and “significant” foreskin still attached, the mom charges.

Ironically, Bellevue was the same hospital where the renowned Dr. Lewis Sayre made outrageous claims that circumcision cured a boy’s paralyzed legs in 1870. While at Bellevue, Sayre also claimed to cure hernia, epilepsy, mental disorders, and hip-joint pain. Sayre’s promotion helped set America on the path of genital cutting of babies that still haunts us over 147 years later. Sayre was later elected as President of the American Medical Association.

The case will be heard before a judge to determine if the case can proceed due to a late notice of claim filed with NYC. (Bellevue is owned by the NEW YORK CITY HEALTH & HOSPITALS CORPORATION)

On December 10, Intaction held its first ever event for intactivists to celebrate foreskin advocacy. We call it IMAGINE because it takes imagination to make a dream a reality. The dream where babies can enter the world peacefully without the threat of genital cutting.

We recognize that change is happening. What seemed impossible before, is becoming a reality. Where Americans used to view genital cutting as beneficial and healthy, now they are starting to value being intact as natural, anatomically important, and desirable.

The celebration was an evening of fun, food, and entertainment, that took place at the Knitting Factory in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NYC. Some of the evenings highlights were:

A welcoming speech by Intaction Director Anthony Losquadro

An appearance by radio personality and comedian Sal “The Intact Stockbroker” from the Howard Stern Show.

Portions of the event were recorded for replay on the Howard Stern Show and in Kenny Neal Shults upcoming documentary “Pigs Without Blankets.”

Over fifty people attended our event, some traveling as far as Philadelphia and San Francisco to join us.

Imagine 2016 became the subject of several discussions on the Howard Stern Show – Sirius XM 100, covering the issue of circumcision and genital cutting. Some of these on-air discussions were very lengthy and were repeated on replays and Sirius on-demand services.

The Intaction Board of Directors want to thank our guests, our talented performers, and our guest of honor for making it a very special night that culminated a year of achievements.

Inside the anti-circumcision movement: These blood-soaked activists want you to cut them some slack

Anthony Losquadro makes for a gallant chauffeur, though the vehicle he’s driving is a 30-foot-long, 9,000-pound repurposed van tricked out with a sound system, special lighting, and LED text signs. We’re in Washington, D.C. for the annual conference of the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists: he, to protest and me, to watch him.

For the past two years, Losquadro’s anti-circumcision group,Intaction, has used this eye-catching truck to highlight their cause. The images plastered to the tall, flat sides of Intaction’s mobile education unit are portraits of young men of various races, holding baby pictures while looking aggrieved. Those LED text signs scroll through messages like “Hygiene is about soap and water, not CUTTING,” and “Circumcision is painful and risky for babies.” I DID NOT CONSENT is emblazoned above and below, with Intaction’s name and website.

“We encounter a lot of curiosity,” Losquadro tells me. “The majority of the response is positive.” I watch a man inside a sedan next to us tilt his head to read the truck’s sides. He makes a “hmm!” expression, nods in concession, and finally grabs his phone to take a picture.

A former merchant marine, Losquadro is square-jawed, dark-haired, and burly—the type of Italian New Yorker made famous by early Scorsese films. It was he who found the volunteer models and arranged a photo shoot, but it was Intact America, another anti-cutting group, who started the “I Did Not Consent” campaign in 2012 by inviting circumcised men to send shots of themselves in this same pose. (“Intact” is the anti-circumcision movement’s preferred descriptor for uncircumcised men.) Those opposed to infant penile circumcision often emphasize the harm it can cause while refuting its alleged medical benefits. But according to Losquadro, the most irrefutable argument is the one that hinges on personal rights.

“You can’t force a medical procedure on someone, no matter how beneficial it is,” he says, using the example of a cancer patient who forgoes chemotherapy. “How can you not sympathize with this position?” Even though we usually defer to legal guardians about what happens to the bodies of children—whether that involves dietary choices and medical treatments or even ear piercings—the intactivists find elective genital surgery particularly indefensible since it involves such an intimate part of the body.

Most Americans are loath to consider the ethical implications of male circumcision given many men’s apparent apathy about their own. If it’s not usually a problem for those who’ve been through it, what’s the big deal? But Americans also claim to staunchly support independence and free will, whether that means freedom from the desires of the state or another individual, and bodily integrity is a crucial part of that. At a time when debates about campus assault, the sentencing of convicted rapists, and the alleged sexual crimes of Bill Cosbyand Roger Ailes dominate mainstream news, Americans are becoming more fluent in the language of consent. So why shouldn’t it apply to babies and their penises?

Though their tactics can be inflammatory and sometimes rely on troubling, unexamined analogies, the anti-circumcision advocates have a point: America’s embrace of male circumcision, established in an era deeply hostile to sexuality, uniquely lays bare our gendered double standards about bodies, physical pleasure, and trauma.

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When we pull up to the convention center corner where other “intactivists” are spreading the message on foot, Losquadro receives a hero’s welcome: waves, shouts of greeting, rainbow flags and sturdy signs. Intactivism isn’t only for cis men. Plenty of women are in attendance, too, in a crowd of about 40 people that spans an age range of about 45 years. As Losquadro makes one more loop around before finding a parking space, I have the sense that I’m in a parade float, like a pageant winner. “Born in the USA” plays through the truck’s speakers. It’s a beautiful May morning in the nation’s capital. I text my friends: I’ve never felt so American.

Compared to most of the world, the United States is big on circumcisions. At this point, it’s a secular American practice; it’s an obstetrician, not a religious figure like a mohel, who’s most likely to perform one. The U.S. circumcision rate (meaning how many newborns undergo the procedure) is officially placed at around 56%, which is lower than it once was but still far higher than other parts of the world. One-fourth of the planet’s men are Muslim and many are circumcised for religious reasons, as are most Jews, but the majority of European, Asian, and Central and South Americancountries don’t practice ritual foreskin removal, and the World Health Organization estimates only 30% of all men are circumcised.

Even fewer countries practice female circumcision, more commonly known as female genital mutilation and largely regarded as a serious human rights violation. (About 5% of the world’s women are circumcised, or 200 million of 3.7 billion.) In many parts of the world, it’s long been accepted that infant circumcision is unnecessary and devoid of substantial physical benefit.

Some countries have even banned it outright. In Denmark and Sweden, circumcisions that aren’t medically necessary are not allowed on children under the age of 12. Germany came close to an effective ban after a high court’s condemnatory ruling, but Parliament rushed to protect it in response to Muslim and Jewish outcry. In the 1970s, our own American Academy of Pediatrics agreed, “there are no valid medical indications for routine circumcisions, and the procedure cannot be considered an essential component of health care.” The Academy’s 2012 policy walked back this claim, stating “the health benefits of newborn male circumcision outweigh the risks,” but still stopped short of recommendation.

The politics of male circumcision first caught my attention in 2007, when the WHO officially recommended the procedure for Africans of all ages as an “important strategy” for HIV prevention in heterosexual men. For years, Washington D.C.—where I lived at the time—has struggled with an HIV epidemicthat rivals rates of contraction in some African countries, and the United States’ HIV contraction rate overall has long outpacedother developed nations, countries in which circumcision is far less common. If circumcision were such a magic bullet for African states, why hadn’t it worked better here at home? I thought. And if it’s so effective, why wasn’t the recommendation that males everywhere be circumcised? The implicit argument seemed to be that it was easier to convince African men to sever a piece of their genitals than it was to convince them to use condoms—either that, or parts of Africa were to be the test region for a prescription not yet applied to the Western world. It had the hallmarks of colonialmentality run rampant.

Circumcision is still not regarded as a viable HIV deterrent on any other continent. Even South Africa has rejected circumcision as a way to prevent HIV, and has prohibitions in place on circumcisions performed on boys under 16. Yet circumcision continues to be touted by many American doctors as a “surgical vaccine”—an inflated claim so widely criticizedand so breathtakingly irresponsible it’s a wonder it’s still repeated. “Surgical vaccine” is not an actual thing, and the only time the phrase is ever used is in connection with HIV and male circumcision, in spite of the fact that condoms and anti-retroviral drugs are far, far more effective. (Why not rebrand condoms as a “wearable vaccine”?)

Anti-circumcision activists have to push back against a more-than-century-long ugly history.

All of this matters for any society invested in scientific accuracy, but it also matters for intactivists’ mission of winning hearts and minds. (None of the people I spoke with attacked religious beliefs, or prioritized passage of laws banning the act. A cultural shift was the goal.) When male circumcision is stripped of its patina of medical legitimacy, it becomes an ethically suspect procedure, at least when it’s performed on infants or children too young to give meaningful medical consent. Without health advantages, a parent’s decision to cut their child’s penis starts to seem capricious and indefensible.

That’s exactly why some circumcision advocates grasp at straws to portray it as an easy, health-improving package—not just a surgical vaccine but a surgical multivitamin. In addition to the HIV angle, they cite lower rates of HPV contraction (although there’s a real vaccine for that) and lower incidence of urinary tract infections, which already has a low rate of occurrence among men.

The real pro-circumcision clincher, though, is the locker room argument—the claim that cutting is necessary because it’s already the norm, and without undergoing it, other boys will make fun. But parents regularly bestow children with names that invite ridicule. Bullies are merciless about a host of physical traits, from big ears to red hair, but parents don’t habitually dye their kids’ hair or interfere with their baby’s ears as a teasing preempting measure. And if Garfield is a traditional family name that’s been passed down for generations, you better suck it up, Garf, Jr.

Such distinctions can work in reverse, too. I went to high school with a boy who propositioned girls by promising his natural penis was more interesting, responsive, and special than circumcised ones. In gay communities, uncut men are often explicitly fetishized and if you’re looking for testimonials from women who love foreskin, you will find them. Fear of mockery is especially unfounded now that half of American babies do not get circumcised. Intactivists believe a more accurate count would put that number even lower, and that regardless of what it is now, it will continue to fall in the years ahead.

Circumcision rationalizations, and the stigma they depend upon—that foreskins are dirty, hard to clean, and therefore teeming with bacteria—make sense in the context of America’s circumcision history. Foreskin removal became popular during the Victorian era, when an obsession with eradicating germs and masturbation took hold. Circumcision was recommended as prophylactic for a variety of health issues, especially “sexual problems,” and various medical professionals of the ageremarked approvingly on the potential of creating a link between genitals and pain. (Use of anesthesia has only very recently become the standard, following an inexplicably protracted debate about whether babies actually felt pain during the procedure.) Nowadays we don’t often fret that foreskin is too perfect a masturbation sleeve, but the old chestnut that foreskins are filthy disease traps has held its ground.

“This is a lifetime wound. This is a permanent injury made visible.”– Brother K, anti-circumcision activist

Today, it’s the defenders of those supposed health benefits who often frame aversion to circumcision in Asian, Latino, and black parents as an issue of ignorance instead of cultural differences. Disconcerted by news of falling circumcision rates, which some experts attributed to the United States’ increasingly diverse demographics, the authors of one 2014 article suggested that the procedure be treated, once again, like vaccination and “be part of public health policies.”

This legislative rhetoric has solid historical precedence, too. In the 1890s, several American physicians “vigorously advocated” for compulsory circumcision of black men to keep them from raping white women: The government should be “enforcing circumcision” as one would “vaccination or quarantine regulations.” (This suggestion was endorsed by at least twomedical journals on the theory that Jewish men never rape, and their lack of foreskin must be the reason why—presumably because it was thought to decreases both genital pleasure and sexual craving.)

In the early 1900s, a doctor writing in the Journal of American Medical Association bemoaned the challenges of convincing syphilitic black men not to have sex, and suggested infant circumcision as the best method to control the spread of disease. As recently as 1949, doctors pointed to promiscuity, “meager” education, and a low circumcision rate to explain STIs among black citizens. Today, there are still doctors who maintain circumcision keeps Jewish men from committing rape.

Anti-circumcision activists have to push back against our more-than-century-long inculcation of this ugly history, along with a complacent modern medical community and deeply ingrained public misconceptions. So it’s no wonder they sometimes resort to dramatic, eyebrow-raising tactics to get their points across.

One thing that hardly tempers intactivists’ reputation as a group of isolated crazies is their fondness for blood imagery. On that day in D.C., fake blood is everywhere. As Losquadro and I take another pass by the protesters, I spot one man leaning over to spray paint another’s crotch deeper red. They’re both wearing white jumpsuits, the better to make the “blood” stand out.

Brother K is the man most prominently associated with the red-crotch-on-a-white-body look of some intactivism protesters. (Women wear the suits, too.) He’s head of the non-profit groupBloodstained Men, and he came by his name in 1986 when he changed it as a way to heal himself from the lasting psychic effects of circumcision. During a phone call after the protest, he would tell me that the “K” stands for “kind,” which I found easy to believe. He struck me as a deeply sincere and thoughtful guy in spite of his predilection for inflammatory visuals. “This is a lifetime wound,” he says. “This is a permanent injury made visible.”

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Brother K realizes the outfits “enrage some people,” but that’s part of what he’s going for. “Of course bloodstained suits generate an emotional response! We’re the shock troops of the movement.” He’s pleased when passersby take pictures and share them on social media, even as a form of ridicule, because a conversation is often sparked in the comments: At least the word is getting out.

It’s hard not to make a parallel between intactivists’ gory tactics and anti-choicers’. While I’m with Losquadro, a gruesome anti-abortion van follows a similar route to ours. Its images of choice are mangled fetuses; its words concern Jesus, Planned Parenthood, the government. “This guy…” Losquadro says. “He’s really fringe.” But as I exit his truck to get lunch, something catches my eye: It was a mounted, life-sized diorama of a baby strapped to a circumcision board, with forceps and scalpel poised over its penis.

I’m not the only one who made connections with the anti-circumcision movement to unsavory rightwing extremists. When I speak to friends about anti-circumcision activists, they sometimes respond as if I were discussing men’s rights activists: I get eye rolls and derisive laughter. The implication is that intactivists are just whiny men seizing upon a flimsy excuse to feel oppressed. I was relieved, but not surprised to find the people I spoke to didn’t fit that stereotype, not least because many of them are women. (MRAs, of course, sometimes blame feminism for circumcision.)

There’s nothing wrong with (or unusual about) one group of protesters borrowing from the other. And there will always be extremists in every movement. Still, it’s hard to explain away some of intactivism’s common tonal missteps. Most intactivists are white, which makes sense since white families are the ones most likely to practice circumcision in the U.S. But it facilitates the regrettable lack of perspective that allows activists to suggest they’re participating in the equivalent of the 1960s civil rights, or to analogize a mother fighting to keep her son intact to Rosa Parks. And given the penchant for “consent” language, it’s not surprising that many intactivists compare circumcision to rape, often in crude and upsetting terms—including calling doctors rapists or “sex criminals.” (Losquadro had Nirvana’s “Rape Me” on his protest playlist.)

Visceral provocations like the baby diorama seem unfair and inaccurate in a different way; as pro-choice advocates often point out, surgeries always involve blood. It’s true that in hospitals the baby is literally tied to a “circumcision board,” a phrase that wrenchingly evokes brutality. But babies sometimes have to be restrained for other, necessary procedures, too.

Instead of focusing on blood alone, it’s confronting the cosmetic purpose of male circumcision that forces nuanced ethical issues to come to the fore. “It’s not an exact science,” says one doctordescribing the operation on video. “Sometimes we take too much [skin] or too little. The worst,” he adds, “is too little.” Because then the parents request the surgery be done again. There can be no doubt that in these situations, cutting is a culturally-mandated cosmetic choice, not a medically-driven one. But that distinction doesn’t come across when all you’re visually confronted with is a bloody crotch, or a baby’s penis underneath a scalpel.

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Yet even without Intaction’s diorama and Brother K’s suits, it’s the suggestion of fragility in a male body that would (and does) alarm and rankle. Given the way most of us think about cis male bodies and sexuality, a message of male genital vulnerability is likely to be received as extreme and lacking perspective no matter what. Intactivists demand serious protection of bodily integrity in a culture that doesn’t value it, not for women nor for men, nor, as some intactivists point out, for intersex people. (If only attention to the spectrum of invasive, status quo-establishing medical acts were as common as their predilection for overeager use of “rape.”) Feminism, queer theory, and other progressive scholarship has at least laid a groundwork for women to talk about their genital and sexual violations within a patriarchy. But men have not yet done the same for their own specific challenges.

Nobody knows this better than Intact America’s Georganne Chapin, who meets me inside the convention center’s capacious lobby near a Starbucks. Unlike some of the protesters, she wears normal street clothes—no message tee, no bloody pants—but there’s no mistaking her focus. She’s pleasant and candid with me while we speak, but maintains the capable, brisk energy of a woman on a mission. “It’s a terror to confront what we’ve done to our boys,” she says.

Chapin sees circumcisions as part of a larger tendency towards indifference and denial of male pain. She mentions a recent Dear Abby letter in which a man writes in about his anguish and anger regarding his circumcision as an infant. Abby curtly tells him he needs psychological help because he’s probably displacing his reaction to a sexual assault—an example of our culture’s tendency to tell men, “it’s not the end of the world, get over it,” and a response Chapin finds to be woefully callous. We expect men to be so impervious to trauma that only large-scale horrors, namely combat in war, can harm them. (And even then, they may be regarded as wimpy or emasculated.)

Intactivists are treated as practically hysterical when they talk about male circumcision as mutilation but it’s not always a dramatic misnomer; sometimes circumcisions are botched. One study of Canadian doctors concluded that “most physicians performing neonatal circumcisions in our community have received informal and unstructured training.” A credentialed, practicing American pediatric urologist made a point of publicly confirming that he sees the effects of that educational oversight in the many corrective surgeries he performs, none of which are for cosmetic reasons alone. (Which means the effects are severe enough that penile function is impaired.) To deny and ignore the acute shame some men must feel, knowing they’ve been permanently injured in a culture of toxic masculinity that holds a penis to be a man’s defining characteristic, seems indefensibly cruel and senseless. A group of European physicians from 16 different countries unequivocally stated as much, in response to the American Academy of Pediatrics’ 2012 policy suggesting the health benefits of circumcision:

There are no compelling health arguments in favor of circumcision, while it can have serious long-term urological, psychological and sexual consequences. And performing medically unwarranted circumcision of underage boys conflicts with good medical practice. Male infant circumcision conflicts with children’s rights and the doctors’ oath not to do harm.

I don’t learn it until the day of the protest, but 34-year-old West Coast intactivist Jonathan Conte killed himself just days before the ACOG conference. His Facebook page is headed by the same sensationalism of the movement that gives some people pause: images of bloody babies paired with the imagined words of a villainous rapist. “Just relax, I know you’ll like it.” “You deserve it.” “It won’t hurt long.” Yet by all accounts of those who knew him, he was sensitive, intelligent, and gentle. Like the Dear Abby letter writer, Jonathan felt depressed, incomplete, and confused that his parents allowed him to be circumcised. “I didn’t have anybody to talk about this with,” he says in a video still online. “I felt isolated. I didn’t know how to deal with it.”

Of Conte’s passing, Brother K wrote, “All of us see on a daily basis the frantic denial of our friends and relatives, the denial that circumcision has any meaning or significance in our lives.”

It makes sense that Conte borrowed the language of rape to express his pain; men don’t have any other models for discussing intimate forms of physical violation. And this type of social desertion is doubly poignant when considering how cold our culture is to male victims of actual rape. Chapin knows no one can definitively say why Conte killed himself. Still, she points out, “we would have no problem believing … a woman’s trauma [from circumcision] was valid. But we really resist hearing this from men.”

If they learn to speak the language of mainstream politics, the intactivists’ most profound contribution may be breaking down this gendered double standard, along with providing some necessary validation to men who are genuinely hurting. Chapin recalls conversations she had with circumcised men who’d met Losquadro or heard Jonathon Conte speak. “They were just overwhelmed with grief and gratitude that someone was talking about this,” she says. “The isolation is awful.”

10 Reasons You’re a Pro-Circumcision Fart Bag (NSFW)

I used to think circumcision was a good thing. I was also an ignorant fart bag. Coincidence?

After doing a little research, I saw the light. I knew I was wrong. Very fucking wrong. Like pineapple-on-pizza wrong. If you like that shit, you’re wrong and a cunt.

Whatever opinion you may have on infant circumcision, welcome. I ask that you not feel alienated because my beef is not with you. It’s with an article I read recently.

This article to be exact: —–> 10 Reasons I Will Always Be A Pro-Circumcision Mom by blogger and chick lit author Bethany Ramos.

When I first read the article, I wanted to punch someone.

*adjusts glasses*

What in the fuckitty-fucking shit is this shittery-shit factory of giant unholy blasphemous ballsacks?

I recovered.

The second time I read it, I practiced deep breathing exercises and decided to prepare a CALM rebuttal with better GIFs but it went something like this:

If you haven’t read this pro-circumcision article, you should. It’s fun. And by fun, I mean running butt-first into a preheated fire poker. Hey, we all have our kinks, right? I just maxed out my credit card buying Mind Bleach in bulk.

I have a low tolerance for poor research and crappy GIFs, especially on the subject of circumcision. I like to correct false information about this surgery whenever possible. I’m also not against non-therapeutic circumcision. I just happen to think that a man’s dick and how much dick he wants to keep or cut off is his decision.

This subject makes people uncomfortable too. I like to prod them with sticks for my amusement.

A super fun quote from her article:

“Yes, I’m writing a blog post about it [circumcision] because the topic is interesting to me, and people deserve to be informed.”

Yes, people deserve to be informed. If this subject interests you, I encourage you to keep researching.

In the mean time:

*tearing apart your article like the rabid dog that I am*
*wink-wink*

*Here are the top 10 reasons that make a person a pro-circumcision fart bag.*

1.) Citing the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Photo credit: Bethany Ramos

Does the American Academy of Pediatrics really endorse the benefits of circumcision? They seem to, however, this is what they actually have to say about it:

“The American Academy of Pediatrics believes that circumcision has potential medical benefits and advantages, as well as risks. Evaluation of current evidence indicates that the health benefits of newborn male circumcision outweigh the risks and that the procedure’s benefits justify access to this procedure for families who choose it, however, existing scientific evidence is not sufficient to recommend routine circumcision.” Updated 05/14/2015

People seem to cling to the words “benefits” “outweigh” and “risks” while ignoring the rest. Yeah, that’s smart. Are your precious children not worth it for you to read the entire statement? I don’t know who puts their child through surgery for “potential” medical benefits when there are REAL, proven, risks involved with the surgery. You can read them all here: Stanford School of Medicine: Circumcision Complications

Besides that, the AAP can’t even recommend the procedure due to a lack of scientific evidence. But the benefits outweigh the risks? The “potential” benefits with a lack of scientific evidence? Seems to me they are cowardly dancing around the fact that they support infant circumcision with, again, a lack of scientific evidence. Seems legit.

Furthermore, the AAP circumcision task force is made up of only eight physicians. EIGHT! That is an octopus with eight doctor tentacles. Doctoctopus? God, what an ugly creature. It probably eats infant foreskins for snacks, shits em’ out, and then sells the steaming piles to bio-medical and cosmetic companies for profit.

The international group that condemns the AAP’s position on circumcision is made up of 37 doctors from 16 different countries. You can read that rebuttal here: HERE

“There are no compelling health arguments in favor of circumcision, while it can have serious long-term urological, psychological and sexual consequences. And performing medically unwarranted circumcision of underage boys conflicts with good medical practice. Male infant circumcision conflicts with children’s rights and the doctors’ oath not to do harm.”

That sure mouth-punches the AAP baby-foreskin-eating Doctoctopus into oblivion. Good riddance, because that thing was messy and stupid.

2.) Citing “The New York Times” as “proof” of support of infant circumcision.

I hate to break it to you (no I don’t) but The New York Times is a newspaper. Shit happens and they report that shit. If Florida Man lit his balls on fire while screaming racist profanities at the neighborhood pigeons, it doesn’t mean the newspaper reporting the incident agrees with his antics. Do you see the difference? The New York Times quoted the American Academy of Pediatrics when the new circumcision policy statement was released in 2012. The article was well balanced and cited pro-intact opinions as well.

But if we are going to get all technical n’ shit, I want to share this gem:

AWKWARD! The New York Times reported that the American Academy of Pediatrics previously endorsed (ENDORSED!) female genital mutilation because “religion and culture” as recently as 2010. The AAP later retracted their proposal after people went ape shit.

Here’s to you and your “research.”

3.) Making bullshit assumptions and spreading more bullshit.

While the above statement is not inherently false, it is misleading. What is the actual stance of the World Health Organization in regards to circumcision?

“There is compelling evidence that male circumcision reduces the risk of heterosexually acquired HIV infection in men by approximately 60%. Three randomized controlled trials have shown that male circumcision provided by well trained health professionals in properly equipped settings is safe. WHO/UNAIDS recommendations emphasize that male circumcision should be considered an efficacious intervention for HIV prevention in countries and regions with heterosexual epidemics, high HIV and low male circumcision prevalence.

Male circumcision provides only partial protection, and therefore should be only one element of a comprehensive HIV prevention package which includes: the provision of HIV testing and counseling services; treatment for sexually transmitted infections; the promotion of safer sex practices; the provision of male and female condoms and promotion of their correct and consistent use.”

The WHO says nothing about infant circumcision. They only support circumcision of men in HIV prevalent countries, which is NOT North America (in case some of you are confused). Sexually acquired HIV is not a risk factor for an infant nor should it be a deciding factor for a child because it’s not even relevant.

BUT WAIT! HANG THE FUCK ON! There’s more.

What about the WHO’s claim that circumcision can reduce the spread of HIV up to approximately 60%? Is it true OR bullshit pseudoscience? First of all, the 60% figure comes from a relative rate of reduction. The difference in HIV prevalence between intact and cut men from the study was: 2.49% to 1.18%. The WHO makes it sound as if circumcision will decrease the chance of a heterosexual man contracting HIV by 60%.

It is no secret that the three randomized controlled trials (RTC) are heavily criticized by the global medical and scientific communities. Why? For a shit-load of reasons, but some of the main highlights include:

“Numerous serious flaws in these RCTs included: inadequate equipoise, researcher and participant expectation bias, selection bias, inadequate blinding, problematic randomization, lead-time bias, attrition bias/participants lost to follow-up, early termination, and failure to control for non-sexual transmission of HIV, all of which most probably exaggerated treatment effects.” Source: http://m.pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/130/1/e175/reply

“Billions of dollars to circumcise millions of African males as an HIV infection prevention have been sought, yet the effectiveness of circumcision has not been demonstrated. Data from 109 populations comparing HIV prevalence and incidence in men based on circumcision status were evaluated using meta-regression. The impact on the association between circumcision and HIV incidence/prevalence of the HIV risk profile of the population, the circumcision rates within the population and whether the population was in Africa were assessed. No significant difference in the risk of HIV infection based on the circumcision status was seen in general populations. Studies of high-risk populations and populations with a higher prevalence of male circumcision reported significantly greater odds ratios (odds of intact man having HIV) (p < .0001). When adjusted for the impact of a high-risk population and the circumcision rate of the population, the baseline odds ratio was 0.78 (95% CI = 0.56-1.09). No consistent association between presence of HIV infection and circumcision status of adult males in general populations was found. When adjusted for other factors, having a foreskin was not a significant risk factor. This undermines the justification for using circumcision as a primary preventive for HIV infection.” Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/25760456/

Let’s take this a step further:

If we are to assume the male foreskin harbors dangerous bacteria and viruses, we would see a significant decrease in HIV among countries with a high circumcision rate. The truth is, there is no discernible difference. Look at it this way, there is a reason why most of the world’s parents are not trying to circumcise their infants as a way to prevent disease.

The circumcised US actually has a higher rate of HIV infection than intact Europe. How’s that for a fun fact?

Hmmm, do I want a needle-prick? Or do I want someone to forcibly spread my legs and saw off my clitoral hood?

But if you’re really convinced circumcision isn’t that painful for a baby, you can watch this video: neonatal circumcision. Don’t worry. The surgery is “very simple.” The video was posted on YouTube in 2010 by Kevin M. Windisch MD from Sparks, Nevada. The doctor is circumcising his own son, Benjamin, with full anesthetic.

Even if a child is too young to hold a conscious memory of the procedure, the body still remembers. When the body experiences pain or trauma, the adrenal gland releases a stress hormone called “cortisol.” Elevated levels of cortisol in a newborn have proven to negatively affect brain development. Infant trauma has real life-long consequences in adults including: increased anxiety, altered pain sensitivity, stress disorders, hyperactivity/attention disorder, impaired social skills, and patterns of self-destructive behavior. Sources: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/10657682/ ; Science Daily: Pain In Infancy Alters Response to Stress, Anxiety Later in Life

Suppose the procedure is pain-free, would that excuse it? No, it wouldn’t. Because circumcision is a permanent, irreversible procedure and should only be done to consenting adults and in the case of an immediate medical need. Don’t hate. All I want is for boys to have the same right to genital integrity as girls. American Girls have legal protection from non-therapeutic surgery on their genitals. Why is it so much to ask for boys?

“Shouldn’t the fact that you are comforting yourself by saying ‘He won’t remember it’ tell you that what you’re about to do is not good? You admit circumcision is unethical and inhumane the moment you have to justify it by saying your child won’t remember it.” – Seth Grimmr, Human Rights Activist

5.) Dropping the erroneous “hygiene” argument.

Which medical professionals recommend it for basic little boy hygiene?

These ones?

The foreskin is fused to the head of the penis (glans) by a delicate membrane and naturally separates over time. The foreskin does not fully retract until the average age of ten. During the circumcision, the foreskin must be forcibly separated from the glans before the cutting even begins. It’s akin to ripping a fingernail from a finger.

There is no “extra” cleaning required for intact boys. In fact, intact boys are easier to clean than circumcised boys. Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/9393302/Some of you may have chosen to circumcise your son because you thought you’d be constantly cleaning and fiddling with his penis. Sorry to say, you were misinformed. You may as well have circumcised him to prevent unicorn attacks.

Many parents are advised to forcibly retract the foreskin and clean underneath. This is not only bad advice, but can be very painful and permanently damaging to a child. Forceful retraction causes micro-tears in the delicate tissue resulting in inflammation and infection. Of course, many parents are just doing what they were instructed to do by a “medical professional.” Imagine if they told people to swab their daughter’s vaginas out with a Q-tip at every diaper change. Infection city? Oh yeah.

Furthermore, what is more hygienic than an open wound in a diaper exposed to urine and feces?

The hygiene argument isn’t even valid. If we want to justify cutting healthy tissue from a boy’s private parts for “hygiene” we should start with women. Women get more infections (such as UTI’s), have more folds for bacteria to hide, bleed once a month, and have a retractable foreskin. Would it be logical to remove parts of women’s genitals for “hygiene?” Why not? Because it’s cruel, oppressive, sexist, and overall bigoted? Well, yeah.

The hygiene argument is a residual idea from the Victorian Era. American doctors from the late 1800’s prescribed circumcision as a treatment for masturbation. They believed that burping the worm lead to insanity and eventually death. Sexuality back then was viewed as sinful and inherently dirty and dangerous. So when you say, “circumcision is cleaner,” what you’re actually saying is, “sexual libido is dirty.” A cut penis is a pure and righteous penis.

Why do you think circumcision became highly medicalized in America but not other developed countries? Because Americans are prude assholes. That’s why.

Circumcision to reduce the risk of UTI’s (Urinary Tract Infections)? The overall risk of a UTI for an infant boy is 1%. (Girls are at a higher risk due to shorter urethras. Girls receive antibiotics, not genital surgery.)

“Given a risk in normal boys of about 1%, the number-needed-to-treat to prevent one UTI is 111. “

Penile Cancer? Fuckin’ really? Is it possible that penis reduction surgery (circumcision) would reduce the risk of cancer? Sure. But only in the foreskin, the part of the body that a cut man no longer has. The only way to prevent penile cancer is to chop off the entire penis. So let’s cut out the vulva of baby girls to prevent vulvar cancer. Because:

According to many pro-circumcision dip-shits, the male foreskin in infancy is “just a flap of skin” removed by a “simple and nearly painless procedure.”

But on a grown man, the foreskin suddenly turns on its owner and becomes a-huge-smelly-confusing-Rubik’s-cube, and if removed, the pain is so bad that getting finger-fucked by zombies outside a Bed, Bath, and Beyond is merciful by comparison.

But how common is a medically necessary circumcision?

According to a study from Finland, where you know, they aren’t trying to rip back baby foreskins to clean underneath, the risk is 1 in 16,667. To put this into perspective, your son has a 1 in 1000 chance of developing breast cancer. It makes more sense to remove his breast buds than part of his penis.

Doctors shouldn’t be recommending circumcision, but for some reason, society assumes that medical school makes a person immune to psychopathic behavior. Granted some doctors are horribly misinformed and some just enjoy skinning things for a good time.

8.) Carving a sexual preference into a child.

I’m not sure what the sexual preference of an adult (specifically a boy’s mother) has to do with his penis. I guess she plans on using it someday? Not sure. But aesthetics should never be brought up in a conversation about a child’s sex organs, ever. That is creepy and disgusting.

Since “looks” were mentioned though, take a glance at the below comparisons. Which looks better to you?

It doesn’t matter which one looks better to you. What matters is that the owner of the penis gets to decide what looks better to HIM. If a man wants to be circumcised, he can make that choice himself as a consenting adult. Shit, he can get it done in an afternoon. If a cut man wants to be intact? He cannot magically regrow his foreskin. He’s fucked.

An option that some men are pursuing is foreskin restoration. This does not replace everything that circumcision takes away, but it brings back the gliding mechanism and glans coverage, some of the many functions that are lost to circumcision. Much like ear gauging, foreskin restoration is painless and encourages the growth of new skin and it slowly covers the glans over a period of four to six years. It would be irresponsible to think your son could just restore if he isn’t happy with his circumcision, therefore the surgery is justifiable. I’m sure he’ll be cursing your name with every tug, for the next four to six years.

“Before I began restoring, I had extremely tight, painful erections, with little to no pleasure. After starting restoration, I no longer have tight painful erections and I have an incredible amount of pleasure.” – Race Allen Craft, Human Rights Activist

9.) Downplaying the harms of circumcision while hiding behind laws that protect your own gender.

“Circumcision is not that big of a deal.”

Imagine if these babies were little girls, would that change your perspective?

“I am a thirty year-old white woman from the American South, born in a Catholic hospital to non-religious parents and I was circumcised. I’m missing more than most FGM victims, and yet I’m still thankful I’m not a man. If I were a man, I’d be missing my g-spot, even as a mutilated woman, I still have that. I still orgasm. I had a child (though birth was difficult). They are equally atrocious acts, but speaking in terms of loss, men lose much much more.” -Amber Baxley, Human Rights Activist (pictured above)

In America, female genital mutilation (classified as removal of partial or all female genitalia without medical need, pin-pricks and nicks included) was outlawed in 1997. Although the 14th Amendment reads as follows:

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” – Section 1, 14th Amendment, United States Constitution.

According to the US Constitution, not only do males have a right to their own property, (the right to keep all their normal, natural body parts intact) but the US must enforce laws to protect males just like they currently do for females. It is about equality. If you do not support a male child’s right to keep his natural body intact so he can make decisions regarding his own body and sexuality, you do not support equality. It’s that simple.

10.) Having no idea what “pro-choice” means.

Children are not property and parents do not own their bodies. Exactly why do you want to own your son’s penis? Does it make you feel big? Does it make you feel powerful?

The foreskin ignorance in America is so thick, I could tie it around my neck and hang myself.

I consider myself “pro-choice” too but I support a man’s choice to make this decision for himself. If you wouldn’t support a parent’s choice to circumcise their daughter, it doesn’t make sense to support it for their son. Unless you’re a sexist bigot, of course.

By now, many of you have heard of “female genital mutilation.” You’ve likely read about the sadistic shit they do to girls in the name of “culture.”

When you think of female genital mutilation, you probably think of a little girl being dragged into a straw hut and forcibly raped with a broken bottle or rusty razor, her genitals mutilated, bleeding, and barely recognizable. The truth is, this form of FGM is the rarest form. The most extreme, yes, but the rarest form. It typically takes place in unsanitary conditions in regions of Sub-Saharan Africa.

Something you likely didn’t know: boys are also victims of genital mutilation in these harsh, unsanitary conditions. So far this year, in the South African region, 14 boys have died and 141 have suffered major injuries as a result of circumcision.
The most common forms of FGM take place in a sterile medical setting, just like male circumcision in America. They typically remove the female foreskin for reasons mirroring the reasons we do for males: greed, ignorance, fear, myth, religion, superstition, bullshit fuckery non-sense. American girls are legally protected but “culture” doesn’t stop some people from mutilating their daughters. Almost 500,000 women and girls living in the US are victims of FGM. Education is our most powerful ally.

Achlee White lifting the female foreskin and pointing to the head of the clitoris (head of penis in a male)

Jonathon Conte, Human Rights Activist

I often hear this: “But they are not comparable.”

They are not comparable you say? Even a small clitoral nick or a piercing is considered FGM, but removing the entire prepuce of a male is “not as bad as FGM?”

If a child was raped, surely you wouldn’t first ask if the child was male or female before determining the severity of the assault. If a child was beaten, you wouldn’t decide that it was worse if the child was female rather than male.

So why do you use this logic when children (male, female, and intersex) are held down against their will and a knife taken to their most sensitive private parts?

Take some time, digest this material. Look up the policies on circumcision for yourself. Read the entire statement. Read the studies. Educate yourself on cultural or societal conditioning. Learn the functions of the foreskin, learn about genital anatomy, learn about human rights. If you’ve done all of that and still choose to be “pro-circumcision” or “pro-parent’s choice” you’re not only a fart bag;

The anti-male circumcision movement likens the procedure to genital mutilation and because of that it wants to restore what was lost with cones, weights, and more.
Ron Low never realized there was something missing from his penis until he was a grown man.

In the mid-1980s, he came across a magazine article about circumcision that detailed several personal accounts from men whose foreskins had not been removed at birth. This chance encounter with a then-unpopular position made Ron consider the reasons behind circumcision.

“How could humans could be the product of thousands of years of evolution and still need a part [of their body] cut off?,” Low recounts himself thinking.

Like many people, Ron viewed circumcision as a routine procedure that had been done to him as it was done to all male infants. According to the World Health Organization, 80 percent of adult males in the United States have been circumcised, compared to about 30 percent of the rest of the world. The Centers for Disease Control and the American Academy of Pediatrics say that the benefits of male infant circumcision outweighs the risks. The World Health Organization endorses circumcision as a means to reduce the risk of the transmission of HIV.

Still, it appears that a movement to end routine circumcision is finding some success, or is at least coinciding with the practice being on the wane. Newborn male circumcision in the U.S. declined from 64.9 percent in the 1960s to 58.3 percent in 2010.

Low became a father in the early days of the Internet, when social media was limited to chat rooms and virtual bulletin boards.

“I was lurking around in chat rooms trying to find some solidarity with other parents, and these people would always show up and start railing about circumcisions and it was annoying!” he Low said. After a time, however, he slowly came around to their way of thinking. “But the same people who were always jumping in and talking about this stuff, some of those same folks, I am still in touch with today and use as sources.”

Around the same time, Low heard a radio program featuring author James Bigelow. He was discussing his latest book, The Joy of Uncircumcising.

As Low listened to Bigelow describe using tapes and weights to stretch the slack skin on his penis in order to regrow a foreskin, the interviewer quipped, “Could you just wear a little hat?”
An engineer by trade, Low thought: Well, why couldn’t you just wear a little hat? His own restoration journey was years off, but when he speaks of the design for the TLC Tugger, he hearkens back to this moment.

Ron and his wife had always enjoyed a fulfilling sex life, but as she approached her forties, considered a woman’s sexual peak, Ron noticed it was taking him longer to satisfy her. After some failed attempts using different positions as well as lotions, his doctor suggested that he should just get used to the fact that his circumcision had left the head of his penis exposed and dry.

“I knew it wasn’t my wife’s fault. And I had to do something. So I went to her, on April Fool’s Day, and I told her I was going to restore.” Ron’s wife predictably thought he was kidding. “I assured her I was serious, and told her to help me be accountable, and also to let me know when I should remove the tape,” he says, as taping meant that removal would involve cleaning off the adhesive residue which was a delicate and timely process.

“I taped my penis for four years, 80 percent of the time. And during a fifth year, I only wore the tape at work, but wore a retaining cone the rest of the time. The retaining cone protects the suppleness and sensitivity of the glands and also maintains progress,” he matter-of-factly shares about his own penis, completely unabashed.

Meanwhile, Low was perfecting his own device to restore foreskin without messy tape: the TLC Tugger.

Using silicone, he designed a conical device to grip skin using tension instead of adhesive. The TLC Tugger uses constant tension to grip the foreskin and then “tug” it via a strap attached to the leg. (Weights are available for purchase to enhance the tugging experience.)

“Unless men are experiencing a medical condition, there is no need to seek medical attention in order to undertake the restoring process,” Low said. Instead, he believes strongly in the “restoring community” he has created on his website, where he estimates about one-third of the members are customers.

Despite being a soft-spoken Midwesterner, there is no mistaking his harsh words for infant circumcision.

“Informed adults can make the decision. It is forced mutilation on those who can’t consent.”

There are no medical studies to suggest the efficacy of foreskin restoration and you’ll be hard pressed to find any physician endorsing devices like Low’s.

A urologist with over thirty years’ experience in the U.S. and abroad had harsh words about foreskin restoration.

“It is definitely on the fringe of medicine, and I doubt there are many urologists who would treat it,” the physician, who requested anonymity said.

“It is ironic they feel they have been mutilated against their will in the USA, while in parts of the third world it is accepted practice to circumcise all males as HIV prevention,” he added. Instead of foreskin restoration, the physician recommended men seek psychiatric evaluation and care.

Anthony Losquadro is aware of the psychological dimension of foreskin.

“You gotta be able to talk about this stuff,” the executive director of Intaction, an anti-circumcision group said. “We won’t be embarrassed to talk about it. We won’t be ashamed, doctors should be be the ones who are ashamed. We’re gonna try to gain back our power.”

Anthony said he was always somewhat aware that something had been done to him.

“The scars didn’t seem natural and no one was telling me, so I thought it must’ve been some type of trauma.”

As he moved into adulthood, Anthony said delved into all the research he could find and became angry.

“Doctors only amputate. They joke around that no one has come back and complained, but there are hundreds of thousands of men who have restored or are restoring. There are lots of unhappy men out there.”

The restoration process will not completely reverse the effects of a circumcision, though.

“You don’t get back 20,000 nerve endings, and you won’t get back your frenulum,” Anthony said, referring to the band of tissue that connects the foreskin and a lubricating gland. “Those are the most sensitive areas of the penis and there’s no way to get them back.”

Anthony sees restoration as more than just a physiological fix, however.

“The physical appearance is indistinguishable, but men feel their bodies have been violated. Restoration helps empower men to overcome these feelings as well as the physical.